Brett Jackson

Last week’s draft poured a whole shizzload of new prospects into the realm of pro baseball, and damn near all of them carry zero fantasy relevance at the moment. Don’t let Harold Reynolds fool you. Mark Appel will not be pitching for the Astros this season. Also, Harold Reynolds is dumb. Appel, however, is one of a handful of draft prospects who could offer value to fantasy teams as soon as this time next year. And in a recent Scouting the Unknown series, I took a look at nine draft prospects who appeared destined to move quickly toward the bigs — the Michael Wacha/Kevin Gausman/Mike Zunino types of the 2013 draft. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, check out part 1, part 2, and part 3 by clicking those links.

We at Razzball realize that exporting our views across the country has damaging consequences on the blogosphere. To help make amends, we are reaching out to leading team blogs and featuring their locally blogged answers to pressing 2013 fantasy baseball questions regarding their team. We feel this approach will be fresher, more sustainable, and require less energy consumption (for us anyway). The 2013 Cubs Fantasy Baseball Preview comes courtesy Mike Petriello fromHire Jim Essian.

Having already covered my Top 25 Fantasy Baseball Prospects for 2013, I thought I’d expand our scope a bit and take a look at 25 more who could offer fantasy value this year. Again, predicting for arrivals is an inexact science, and there’s plenty of time between now and opening day for circumstances to change. No doubt, this list is missing some prospects who’ll surface in the bigs and make an impact in the fantasy game a la 2012 Kyle Seager. Likewise, there’ll be plenty of duds here too. Anyway, here’s how I see the next 25 2013 fantasy baseball prospects:

The Run DownSince Theo and his gang arrived, it’s been evident that the Cubs are on a better track. They traded for Anthony Rizzo, they signed Jorge Soler, they drafted well (it seems that way, at least), and they’ve added much-needed depth to their farm system via deals with Atlanta and Texas. In just one year’s time, it’s quite impressive how improved this system is. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when 2011 draftees, Javier Baez and Dan Vogelbach, break out with huge statistical years. Still, the bottom-up impact that the Epstein-Hoyer regime has had on this organization cannot be denied. If it’s lacking anywhere, it’s in the starting pitching department — there simply aren’t many high-impact arms coming up. But the Cubs have ample dough to work around that shortcoming with signings at the big league level. It might be a few more years until they’re contenders in the NL Central, but it’s clear that that they’re headed in that direction. Oh, and there’s quite a bit of fantasy impact in the names below.

Yesterday, Jason Kipnis went 2-for-4 with his 13th homer. Member when he had 11 homers going into the All-Star break and we were like, “Yo, I’d let Kipnis sleep with my baby’s mama. He earned that shizz, yo. Just make sure you change the sheets, that’s all I ask. Please, blog, may I have some more?

There’s some strong indications that Shelby Miller could be called up by the Cards when the rosters expand on September 1st. “Why should we care about some stunod with a 4.89 ERA in Triple-A? Hey, Grey, we care about stunods now?” That’s you talking to yourself just as a pretty girl walks by and thinks you’re crazy for talking to yourself. Please, blog, may I have some more?

The other day I got an email saying I have a financial windfall coming to me from a deceased relative in Nigerian that I didn’t know. So I don’t even need to be doling out fantasy advice anymore. Take the thirty-seven cents I made yesterday from this site and shove it! Please, blog, may I have some more?

And another rookie is called up. It’s raining rookies that I will pick up for a few days and then drop if they don’t pan out in a matter of three days. First, let’s see what our prospect writer, Scott, said just four days ago about Manny Machado, “Machado’s line on the year at Double-A isn’t pretty: .266/.350/.431, 10 HR. Please, blog, may I have some more?